Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Had a great SXSW experience checking out lots of new music, the great Joe King Carrasco reunited with his original group, Dr. John, a terrific panel on New Atlantis and a finale of Davis Rogan burning it up at Uncle Billy's. Here's a well reported account of the panel by John T. Davis:

SXSW panel: New Atlantis—New Orleans Music Rebuilds

By John T. Davis | Saturday, March 17, 2012, 01:57 PM

New Atlantis—New Orleans Music Rebuilds

ACC

12:30 p.m. Saturday

Community and music are inextricably bound in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed neighborhoods, it sundered a historical tradition of organically-created music that arose from the streets and kindred spirits. Now, New Orleans musicans are rebuilding that community, one street and one band at a time.

Moderator—John Swenson/Journalist and Author

Davis Rogan/Songwriter and Actor

Don B/Musician & Actor

Chris Magee/Artist and Producer

Alison Fensterstock/Journalist

Supa Dezzy/Producer

Two threads bound together the panelists on “New Atlantis—New Orleans Rebuilds.” The first is the HBO series, Treme, which recounts the struggle of a community to rebuild and reconnect in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Several of the panelists also serve as advisors, crew or music coordinators on the program. The second link is Dave Bartholomew, the legendary songwriter and producer of New Orleans artists like Fats Domino, Shirley & Lee and Lloyd Price.

Bartholomew’s son, Don B, as well as his grandsons, Chris Magee and Supa Dezzy were all on the panel. Moderator John Swenson wrote the book New Atlantis: Musicians Battle For the Survival of New Orleans.

“When I returned there in 2005, the city was inundated. I became obsessed with finding everybody’s story. It wasn’t clear that any of the music was going to happen again; Everybody was gone. Every time a club would reopen and people would play music, it was like magic.”

Hip-hop and its New Orleans derivative, bounce, as several artists pointed out, is filling same unifying function as earlier organic musical forms like Second Line, brass bands and the Mardi Gras Indians.

“New Orleans is not just the birthplace of jazz,” said Davis Rogan, who is the inspiration for “Davis McAlary,” the character Steve Zahn plays on Treme. “It’s also got vibrant hip-hop, brass band and rock scenes…There’s a perception among some that the Neville Brothers and Rebirth Brass Band are ‘real’ New Orleans music, but a rapper like Juvenile isn’t.”

That perception is changing, as hip-hop artists and producers are embracing older influences and tapping into the same neighborhood interconnections as musicians before them.

“I always called (the older artists) the ‘Jazzfest Canon’,” said journalist Alison Fensterstock. “But since the storm, there’s been a lot more amalgamating.”

“Bounce seems to be the version of New Orleans hip-hop that’s most connected to vernacular street music—the Second Line, the Mardi Gras Indians, the brass bands…what you’d hear at a party or walking down the street. It demands mutual participation.”

“The Second Line comes to us” said hip-hop producer Don B. “It rolls right through our neighborhood, we just stand outside the door and watch thousands of people march by.”

“It’s the bearers of the culture, the brass bands, the Indians, and hip-hop musicians that made it possible for music in New Orleans to come back,” said Davis. “We made so sure that 110% of the music came back, but we still only have 70% of the audience—everybody is still so busy trying to rebuild their lives.”

“New Orleans musicians said they were taken good care of in Austin, Houston, Atlanta, but even though well cared for, they couldn’t do what they did in NOLA because the music is specific to the community there,” said Swenson. “That’s what these musicians are trying to reestablish there, and it’s creating some new alliances among people who hadn’t worked together before the flood.”

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

After the encouraging response we received to last year’s inaugural full-length Critics’ Poll, we decided to make it an annual tradition. Our regular contributors were asked to vote in the same categories that make up our yearly Readers' Poll, ranking their top five choices in each. The poll focuses on artists’ achievements during 2011, as opposed to their careers in whole.

Winners below are bolded; runners-up are listed in order of number of points. THE EDITORS

BEST OF MEDIA

Book ∙ New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans by John Swenson (Oxford University Press) ∙ Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice by Tad Hershorn (University of California Press) ∙ What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years by Ricky Riccardi (Pantheon Books) ∙ All the Things You Are: The Life of Tony Bennettby David Evanier (Wiley) ∙ Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz by Benjamin Cawthra (University of Chicago Press)

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Some of you have read the article on Ed Volker just published in OffBeat. It was cut and shaped (and slightly rewritten) to reflect the editor’s desire to make it a news story, but it was written as a review/essay. I think some important nuances were lost in the process, enough that I think concerned readers who have no other access to information about Volker’s activities since the breakup of the Radiators deserve to see the original. Here is the piece as written:

Headline: Where's My Monkey?

Members of the Radiators wasted no time forming new bands since the group announced it was calling it quits last year after a 33-year run that defined an era of New Orleans rock. We now have Camile Baudoin's Living Rumors (acoustic and electric versions); Reggie Scanlan's New Orleans Suspects; Dave Malone's group with his brother Tommy, the Malone Brothers; and all of them along with Frank Bua in the ever evolving Raw Oyster Cult. The only Radiators member who has stayed underground since the band performed its "Last Watusi" back in June is Ed Volker, who organized the group at an infamous jam session in his garage on Waldo Avenue back in 1978 and wrote most of their songs.

The reclusive Volker has not been inactive, though. He's just released his latest solo project, Snag, the seventh album's worth of songs recorded in his home studio under his nom de plume Zeke Fishhead and distributed as downloads on livedownloads.com (hard copies are available on order and from the Louisiana Music Factory) since 2007. These recordings cover a lot of ground but it's easy to read the material as the ruminations of a man who was sensing that his life's project was nearing its end. It's also a personal biography of Volker's own journey through the trials of Katrina (I reviewed Prodigal, which covers this timeline, in a previous OffBeat piece.)

When you're dealing with poetry as dense and imagistic as Volker's it's always dangerous to apply strict interpretations to the lyrics. Most of the songs travel along multiple paths. But it's impossible not to see the outlines of a story emerge from these albums.

Radiators fans tend to view these songs in terms of how they would sound if the band played them. It's an understandable point of view given that Radiators songs were always worked up from Volker's demos. Volker would record his ideas on a home system with bare bones arrangements. He'd give tapes to Malone, who would add guitar parts to the songs he liked.

But the songs on these seven Volker releases are not demos, even the few that made an appearance in Radiators shows. These are all fully realized pieces that stand on their own. Without the big arrangements, rock production values and dueling guitars of the Rads versions, these concentrated, low-fi recordings are meant to tell stories. Zeke Fishhead's vocals articulating the lyrics provide the magic in these sonic imaginings; the accompanying music is often incantatory. The resultant outside-of-time feeling these recordings evoke sounds oddly contemporary.

Volker does bring a wealth of musical influences into the mix, evoking ancient folk themes, blues, rock and the dancing clave rhythm at the heart of all New Orleans music from Jelly Roll Morton to Dr. John (and Volker himself). He writes of love both carnal and platonic in an almost religious reverie that makes those themes evocative of the Felliniesque circus/church of the rock 'n' roll concert.

Snag begins with "Let's Get Shiney (Zeke’s spelling) Tonight," a glorious celebration of that communion, a kind of description of what it feels like on a perfect night in New Orleans back at the 501 Club when Professor Longhair was holding court:

"... oh professor, strike up your band

oh roberta, dance me to the promised land

let's get shiney tonight

like the stars over Tipitina's

let's get shiney tonight

like a cricus full of dreamers

set your wild heart free

let's let tomorrow be

m m mm let's get shiney tonight"

The sense of pagan abandon Volker conjures here recurs in various ways throughout the album, from the sultry slow burn of "Don't You Come Down Here" to the apocalyptic desperation of "The Six White Horses." Elsewhere we hear his ruminations on the mythic runes of his own history, "1978 I can't think straight," he sings in "Last Lick," one of the songs written over the years for Mom's Ball themes. "Sometimes it seems it was all a mirage/ did I ever leave that garage/ but I lived to tell the tale that we know." At the song's coda Volker offers an anthemic lament that seems to echo the joy and sorrow of a lifetime: "where is my monkey? Where is my monkey girl?"

You can get glimpses of Volker's reasons for getting off the rock and rolllercoaster in several songs on Snag. "Just a Little Snag," a catalog of contemporary white noise events, references the indignities of travel in post 9-11 America. "Dead Man's Hand" is a travelogue of places where Volker and his bandmates brought the noise over the years, "shakin in chicago in shakopee in skinny Minny in Memphis Tennessee..." But Volker calls for mercy: "I can't shake it I ain't gonna make it... let me loose come on dead man you gotta let me loose." This sense of futility spills over to the commentary on current events "Nothing Works": "Nothing works well, maybe for a while/ sooner or later it all ends up on the pile/ the dungheap of history the scrapyard of time just ask Captain Kirk nothing works."

There's a lot more going on in these songs than I'm alluding to and Volker also ventures into narrative territory that the Radiators seldom visited. A perfect example is the version of the traditional folk tale "Delia's Gone," much more fully realized here as a story in "The Ballad of Delia Green." Volker's version of this story, based on Blind Blake's sheet music chord sequence with an original melody of Volker's own design, is the most detailed account of the murder of Delia Green ever put to song. From the moment the dancer captures the gambler's fancy through the impulsive possession of murder, the remonstrances of the judge and the curse of being haunted by his lover forevermore, Volker delivers this tale of human obsession and folly with cool, mournful precision. Elsewhere Volker ventures into completely new territory on "The Fatal Dose," a film noir script set to song about a mysterious beauty who arrives in New Orleans, wends her way into the nexus of power and corruption of the city's elite and ends up getting the fatal dose.

Anyone who thinks Volker is kidding about leaving the Radiators behind should check out "Kryptonite," an almost giddy renunciation of his superhero powers: "I used to be a man of steel... now I'm just like and Clark Kent without a phone booth in sight... this speeding bullet ain't coming back."

The exultant chorus indicates how happy Volker is with his decision:

ka-boom lordy lordy lordy lordy

ka-boom lordy lordy lordy lordy

looking for a little taste of kryptonite

Volker goes on to acknowledge that others haven't given up the chase:

"saw Bruce Wayne speeding up Rampart St.

faithful Alfred at the wheel

he's a hundred if he's a day

and he's still looking fit to kill"

Volker is obviously very pleased with the opportunity to sit at home with his musical amusements. That satisfaction allows him to look back without bitterness as the elegiac "Save the Last Watusi for Me" indicates. But the final song, "Honeysuckle Still Hanging On the Vine," depicts Volker in his own private Avalon:

About Me

John Swenson has been writing about popular music since 1967. He edited the award-winning website jazze.com for Knit Media and has worked as an editor at Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Circus, Rock World, OffBeat magazine and been published in virtually every popular music magazine of note over that time. He was a syndicated music columnist for more than 20 years at United Press International and Reuters. Swenson has written 14 published books including biographies of Bill Haley, The Who, Stevie Wonder and The Eagles and co-edited the original Rolling Stone Record Guide with Dave Marsh. He is also the editor of The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide.
In another role Swenson is a veteran sports writer who covered the New York Rangers for 30 years, writing pieces for outlets from Rolling Stone to the Associated Press. Swenson is also a veteran horseracing columnist and handicapper who covered the New York racing scene as a columnist for the New York Post and the New Orleans Fair Grounds meet for The Daily Racing Form. His profile on jockey Steve Cauthen: Rise To Stardom, Fall From Grace in Spur Magazine was nominated for an Eclipse Award.